Taylor turns back. Softened a little. Holds his hand up to the sergeant.
'Not answering his mobile or home number. I know on some level I'm probably being melodramatic, but the Plague of Crows is coming back, and some police officer somewhere is going to end up under the knife. Would you mind calling the folk running the bracelet scheme and finding out where he is?'
'Not at all, Sir,' says Ramsay.
'Thank you,' replies Taylor, and then he leaves him, heading back to his office.
Gostkowski and Ramsay share a glance as she follows.
*
There are in Taylor's office three minutes later when the phone rings. Taylor lifts it abruptly, barks, 'Yes?'
'The Sergeant is at his house, Chief Inspector,' says Ramsay.
'You have confirmation of that?' says Taylor.
Slight pause.
'The bracelet is at his house, Sir. There's no alarm gone off to suggest it's been broken or tampered with, so we can assume that the Sergeant is there with it.'
Taylor hangs up without saying anything else. He looks across the desk at Gostkowski.
'The bracelet says he's at his flat.'
'So that's where he'll be,' she says.
Taylor looks at her while he lifts the phone. Dials Hutton's home number, lets it ring. No answer. Uses his mobile to dial Hutton's mobile. Waits for a few rings, then hangs up. Has looked at Gostkowski throughout.
'I'm sure it's nothing, Sir,' she says. 'He's not the most reliable.'
'It's two in the afternoon,' says Taylor, 'he usually isn't that shit.'
Another glance at his watch, a quick look around the station.
'I'm going round there. Only take a few minutes. You stay on the domestic. You know where we're going with it anyway. I'll call in, let you know when I find him.'
Some glib comment comes to Gostkowski's mind, about not killing Hutton when he finds him, but it's not her way to utter any of the occasional glib comments that enter her head.
Taylor leaves.
*
He stands at Hutton's door. No answer. Waits impatiently. Has a bad feeling. Was aware of having had a bad feeling even before he came out here, even before he began to enquire after Hutton's whereabouts. Pointlessly checks his watch. Looks along the short corridor. Tries the door handle. Locked. Another glance along the corridor, and then he puts his shoulder to the door.
Nothing. This is what he needs the Sergeant for. Does it again, and again. Kicks it with the sole of his shoe, hard next to the lock. Nearly falls over. Someone along the landing sticks their head out the door, looks suspiciously along the corridor.
'Fuck off,' mutters Taylor, words vaguely aimed in their direction. The door closes again.
He's not counting. Eventually the lock starts to give and the door opens, screws pinging away into dark corners.
He enters the flat. Smells of cigarettes. Taylor shakes his head. Genuinely thinks at this point that he will find Hutton dead. For all the worry, he's not thinking about the Plague of Crows. He's assuming something much more prosaic about Hutton. Alcohol poisoning, perhaps. A binge too many. Fallen asleep in his bath and drowned.
Would he have killed himself? There was a darkness in him. A depth of some description that he did not talk of. A past. The war in Bosnia. Never talked about it. Never talked about it to the point that it was significant him not talking about it.
'Sergeant?' he calls. Despite the ill-feeling, still wary of walking in on the sergeant, drunk and naked in bed with someone or naked in front of the TV.
Glances into the bathroom. Nothing. Slight feeling of relief, yet the wariness and anxiety grow. Into the bedroom. Clothes dumped everywhere, the bed unmade. A full ashtray. An empty bottle of vodka on the floor beside the bed. Taylor's heart sinks at the sight of it all. And then, there it is, and his heart sinks even more.
The bracelet. The bracelet which was supposed to be impossible to remove without setting off a string of alarms, sitting humbly and quietly on the bedside table.
He stares at it, then carefully takes out a handkerchief, lifts the bracelet and puts it in the pocket of his coat.
40
You might call it sensory deprivation. Can't hear, can't see. There's no smell. Hands and legs bound, can't touch anything. Trouble is, that leaves pain.
A lot of pain. The after-effects of the taser still linger, particularly in my groin, but the worst is my hand. She crushed my hand, while I lay, impotently, consumed by pain. And the pain in my hand has not lessened.
I don't know what the body does to try to combat pain. I presume it does something, releases some chemical or other. Whatever it is, it ain't up to the task of dealing with a crushed hand. The most God-awful screaming pain I could ever imagine.
She crushed my hand to get the bracelet off.
You know? You know what? I deserve it.
I wake up, blinded by darkness, and all I can think is that I've had this coming. I don't know who she is. At least, I'm not sure. I'm not sure, but there was something trying to click in the middle of my brain. I'd been thinking about it, something about her. She seemed familiar. I walked into this. Something about her face.
I saw her in my dream. The dream that's not really a dream, the dream that's a flashback. She was there. She was one of the women, sitting on the sidelines, watching their men being butchered, She was there, getting raped, several men taking her in turn. She lay on the forest floor as her sister or cousin was shot in the head because this pathetic, complicit coward could not get an erection. And then she watched as the coward put two bullets in her grandfather's chest. She was there throughout.
I lie, bound and gagged in the dark, no idea where I am, no sounds, no smell, and that's all I can think. Really, she doesn't look like any of those women, but she could easily have been one of the younger ones. Maybe that's what this is. Revenge. She was a sixteen-year-old girl being violated, physically forced out of her youth.
My hand throbs. My penis aches. Feel a bloody, useless miserable wreck. But lying here, lying in this abject state of despair, I don't feel fear at the horror that's to come, I don't feel regret, I don't feel any kind of self-pity.
Relief.
Is that what I'd say? I feel relief. At last, it's come. Revenge has come. Revenge will be brutal and unpleasant and agonising, but at the end of it I'll be dead, and when I'm dead I'm going to be free. I won't have to live with that night in the forest in Bosnia anymore.
Any day now, I shall be released.
Bob comes into my head. Fuck, I almost laugh, except I can't laugh. My mouth is gagged and anyway, I'm not for laughing. Not like this, and not with those images in my head.
I've been wanting release for so long. Suicide always seemed a chicken's way. Running from it. Not facing up to my past. I knew it was coming eventually. The time when I would have to stand up and face the consequences of what I'd done.
Every time I saw the war crimes tribunal in the Hague, I wondered if they were going to mention me. Mention the Scottish journalist who stuck his nose in, got involved, went too far, couldn't get himself out, sat and watched and even then, when all he had to do was have sex in order to save a life, couldn't even do that.
There seems to be a blanket over me. Why is there a blanket? That seems like a consideration, when none has been previously given.
I'm lying here, tortured, aching. Everything hurts. My past has caught up with me. And I feel relief. And I can't help thinking that I shouldn't be feeling relief. Relief is something else to be feeling guilty about. I couldn't save that woman. I killed the old guy. I don't deserve relief. I don't deserve to feel relief at this torture.